I've had some very interesting conversations with teachers about questioning children. Teachers have said that avoiding questions (one of the strategies we use in VERVE) felt like going against their teacher training. Fortunately, they have experimented with waiting and silence, and been fascinated by the exciting results (the children asking them more questions, for example!).
They're not the only ones coming to this conclusion, that less is more as far as questions are concerned - a deputy head in one of the schools where I worked showed me this interesting article, published in the TES magazine: https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6455139
"Too many teachers turn classrooms into interrogation chambers hoping to engage pupils – but it’s more likely to lead to a dead end.
Each week, a teacher will typically ask their students some 1,000 questions, whereas a pupil can easily get away with asking the teacher just one knowledge-seeking query. You may be wincing at this gross imbalance. It is a big problem, of course, but it’s worse than that: the whole idea of teaching by questioning is flawed."
which supports what what we've seen:
One of the main things about VERVE is giving each child time to think and organise their thoughts so that they can affect and manage what they want to say, do and learn.
If that's raised any questions for you, perhaps about how to apply the principles of VERVE in a classroom setting, get in touch.
Posted by Jo
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